Foundation year (CCW)-
I began my academic career with UAL in Camberwell’s Wilson Road building, taking part in their Foundation Degree. After a term of rotation, experiencing the different specialisms on offer, we were told to categorise ourselves, to stay within our chosen specialism for the remainder of the course. At the time I had a keen interest in music, writing and producing my own songs and albums, but this had served as a supplementary hobby to my pursuits in painting and photography conducted in educational settings (A level). When this time to categorise myself came, I landed on animation as it utilised my abilities in visual media but also satisfied my interest in sound and movement. After starting the term, I soon realised I wasn’t fit for this specialism at all, my peers were talking about animation with a passion that I reserved solely for sound and music. I then decided that I would attempt to pursue sound within the structure of the foundation degree, which previously had shown no signs of accommodation for this.
Through talking with other students, I discovered that there was a specialism named ‘Photography and Time based Media’. I jumped on this opportunity and transferred. This class offered me an in to working in audiovisuals. Although the class was highly photography centric, I was allowed to pursue sound, I produced paralleled works of photography and sound.
Something that is still a point of contention in my mind about the course was the fact that none of my tutors within this degree had any background in sound. The reason I label this a point of contention is because I’m still unsure whether this was to my benefit or deficit. On the one hand, I wasn’t provided with resources to investigate sound art academia. On the other, I was afforded a great deal of freedom and I was able to receive feedback from a place of objectivity within the practice. The feedback was purely that of aesthetic from a fine art perspective, which I think allowed me to produce work with a less restricted approach. I see a thin line between less restricted and less refined, hence the contention.
In conclusion, I believe that this segment of time in my academic career laid a foundation (No pun intended) from which I built an interest of sound art with a heavy visual influence.